Within You
by Unoriginality
Summary: A short piece about just one way that Dilandau might've viewed Celena throughout all those years.


Within You  
By: Unoriginality

_How you turned my world, you precious thing   
You starve and near exhaust me   
Everything I've done, I've done for you   
I move the stars for no one _

The girl had always been there.

He saw her in dreams- a girl his age, always his age, with sad blue eyes that watched him, saw through him. Saw _him_. She was always there in the dreaming, faithfully, every night. 

He hated her. He needed to have absolute control over himself- his mind, his body, everything. And yet there she was, coming to him while he slept, showing him he had no control over his own mind. She danced along the edge of his conciousness, her eyes distant and cold, burning through him. Cold fire. She knew things he didn't know, kept secrets she would not share with him.

She grew up with him, watching him, speaking to him every night in dreams. She'd ask him to stop, no more blood, to take them home. To take her back to her brother. He didn't know who her brother was. He didn't even know who she was, not really. But the who didn't matter so much as the what.

She was _his_.

She was his, and only his, his dark little secret that spoke only to him. She was his as his men were his... but even that he knew was wrong. The girl was his to take care of, a part of him, who saw what his men would never see, who resided in the darkness in the back of his mind and watched over him, even while he was awake and couldn't see her. He hated her, her eyes, her face, her voice, even as that voice faded until he couldn't hear her speak anymore. But she was his. She needed him, needed to be protected, taken care of. Dilandau always took care of what was his. 

He couldn't make her strong, like he did his men. He couldn't take care of this hateful girl that lived in his mind, a faded memory in wakefulness and a constant companion in dreams the way he did the Dragonslayers. She would break, she was fragile.

She was his, so he would take care of her, protect her. He tried to block the images of the blood, the killing, the harshness of his life from her, the things he did that made her cry. She hated him for it, and yet she needed him. He could shield her from it during the day, but at night, while he slept, she would look at him, and _see_ it. Everything he'd done, every word he'd said, every thought he'd had was hers for knowing. He couldn't hide anything from her, even though he knew nothing of her. He was helpless before her, there for her to examine and judge, to take from him what she needed and give it to herself, and give him nothing in return.

And yet he took care of her, because she was _his_.

In their tenth year, she lost her voice. She could only strain against her breath, lips moving to say the same words over and over, but no sound coming out. Or perhaps he just couldn't hear her. He felt her fading, her presence, her command over him diminishing, leaving less and less of a mark on his concious mind. She was retreating into the shadows, leaving him... or being taken from him, he couldn't be sure. By his fifteenth year, she was gone, a vague memory that brought disgust at himself for being unable to control his mind well enough to have banished her long ago.

She was a test, a trial. Her disappearance was proof to him that he had finally mastered himself. She was the hated secret that he could finally forget.

But when he went to that fort, chasing after the Dragon... she screamed. He _heard_ her, very much awake, screaming in the back of his mind, calling wordlessly for... the knight. Allen Schezar.

She called for him, yearned for him. She wanted him, begged Dilandau to let her go to him wordlessly, screaming in the back of his mind, clawing at the walls of shadow to be released from her prison inside of his mind.

She was _his_, and yet she called for someone else. Taking something that was his was an unforgivable sin. He hated her; she was his, didn't she see that? And it was Schezar she wanted.

She was there at his every movement after that, whispering in his ear, calling him a monster, slowly but surely stripping away every part of him and making what she needed a part of herself- everything that was in him was in her, and more. She was perfect, cruel, breaking him, breaking herself, trying to take control...

His men never knew, nor would ever understand what was passing when their commander's eyes would turn dark, and his thoughts would turn inward; even Gatti would not come near him then. They were one then, both in control- his violence, her coldness, their near-constant battle for control... it was the only time that anyone would ever see this fight. He was slipping... more and more, he was slipping. She was there when he slept, when he was awake, until he was afraid to close his eyes, unsure if he was ever actually awake, unsure if maybe he was asleep, if everything around him had turned to dreams and imaginings.

She did not mourn for the Dragonslayers when they died. While his world crumbled and fell around him, she stood by, watching silently, unfeeling. Her eyes were cold to the point of cruelty when she approached him, took his mind, showed him the little girl- her. _Don't leave me alone_. He could see her, back in that room, years ago, crying. He watched as an observer... and _felt_ the words as if they'd come from his own lips. He could feel himself within that tiny girl in this memory, crying, afraid, even while he watched from the other side of the room.

He was clinging desperately to her hand, afraid of being swept away and lost into the darkness that she'd lived nearly their whole life in, and all she could do was stare at him impassively, dark eyes cold, cruel, cutting through him, burning him, even as he faded away. He could feel himself fading from her; everything that he was, everything he'd worked for was fading away.

Tired. He felt tired. He looked at her, and saw nothingness in her. _Damn you! I took care of you! I protected you! You were mine, and all you can do is stand there and watch me die?! DAMN YOU!_ She held his hand, but wouldn't pull him up. She'd taken what she needed from him, and now she would take back what was hers.

Hers? Yes, that's right. He'd been the stranger all along, hadn't he? Never anything of his own, no matter how hard he fought, no matter how hard he worked. Everything he had had been lies, gained on stolen time. But if he were to fade away into the darkness, let himself drown in the mist, exist in shadows, a forgotten face- there he would be his own. There he would be hers, and she would still be his.

That much was always his. She was his. He was hers. Back in that darkness, that was the only truth that existed. He would always hold that over Schezar and anyone else that entered her life- she was _his_.

She was his.

_Your eyes can be so cruel   
Just as I can be so cruel   
Live without the sunlight   
Love without your heartbeat   
I can't live within you _


End file.
